


know i'm not alone (make me stronger)

by kirargent



Series: it comes and goes in waves [2]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Athletes, Family Feels, Friendship, Gen, Lance (Voltron)-centric, Roommates, Sports, Studying, Swimmer Lance (Voltron), Team as Family
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-09
Updated: 2019-07-09
Packaged: 2020-06-24 23:53:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,800
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19734205
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kirargent/pseuds/kirargent
Summary: Snapshots.Lance goes to college, makes friends, swims a lot, and learns that professors can be huge dicks. It's a good thing his friends have his back.





	know i'm not alone (make me stronger)

**Author's Note:**

> You can read this as being in the same universe as the other work in this series, the events of which would take place in the midst of this fic (it’s probably clear when, I think?). You DON’T have to have read that fic though, as this one stands on its own as a gen work if you wanna enjoy it that way! (Also it’s not important which order you read these in, if you do want to read both? I don’t think it matters.)
> 
> "drylands" is just a work-out.........on dry land. for swimmers.
> 
> happy julance uwu

Lance meets Hunk his first day of his first class in his first year at university. Hunk takes tiny, organized notes, and then piles more notes into the margins in cramped, scribbly disarray until looking over at his paper makes Lance’s eyes hurt.

Lance pulls his vending machine skittles from his backpack and catches Hunk’s eyes being drawn to the target-red package. He offers up a handful of friendship candy. Hunk accepts it.

Flash forward a year and a half, and Lance would die for this man without a second’s hesitation.

Lance meets Allura not long after he meets Hunk. One of her not-allowed-in-the-dorms cats has been sunbathing in the grassy central area of the dorm for hours and is bound to catch someone’s attention soon.

He returns the cat.

Allura threatens his life.

He vows his secrecy, gives Blue a final scritch on the head, and shoots Allura with a finger-gun and wink combo every time he catches her eye across the lanes at the pool. He grows intimately acquainted with her disinterested glower.

Then he lends her a pair of headphones on the walk back to campus from the pool one day when hers are broken, and she starts giving him grudging smiles. Then one afternoon, she helps him out when he’s struggling with his Calc homework, towel slung around his neck and hair dripping chlorinated water onto his notes, and he lets her copy his notes from a day she missed in Composition. And then…

Then it’s now, a year later, and she’s his best goddamn friend, and they’re moving in together, holy shit, _finally_. Lance could slither right out of his skin he’s so fucking excited.

Lance and Hunk meet Pidge because an algorithm randomly selects their student ID numbers and makes them unconsenting teammates. They’re tasked with creating a Power-Point presentation in a literature class that fulfills a lot of Lance’s General Education requirements and is therefore chock full of STEM kids trying to get their English credits.

Pidge is closed-off but smart, with a sharp-edged humor that has almost too much bite. Her parents have a dog who slimes Lance’s face with loving slobber. Pidge has a tiny, shy smile when Hunk offers her a bag of homemade cookies. She invites them to hang out with her brother Matt, who’s the kind of generous with his weed that makes Lance decide he’s a decent guy. They all laugh their asses off watching cartoons instead of working on their Power-Point and Pidge tries to bite him for ruffling her hair and Lance laughs so hard he cries, so. It works out with Pidge, too.

Summer is a sticky-hot split second of sun, sand, and hugs from his family.

Lance would miss his friends more, he thinks, if they weren’t on the phone every ten minutes sorting out lease deals.

“No music without headphones unless everyone currently home okay-s it.”

Allura nods to Lance, selecting a blue marker and printing the rule clearly. She looks up when she’s done.

“No gross expired food in the fridge,” says Hunk. Allura grabs her yellow marker.

“No one touches Pidge’s stuff,” Pidge suggests, and Allura notes the rule in green.

“I’m adding ‘no overnight guests without proper warning to the rest of the household,’” she says, capping the green marker and switching to pink.

Lance presses his lips out. “What counts as ‘proper warning’?”

Allura narrows her eyes at him, and Hunk shoves him in the shoulder. “Just be courteous, dude. Come on.”

Lance frowns. “Okay, but—”

“Notice must be provided in the morning,” Allura decides. “Unplanned visits require you to text the group and ask for permission, which may be denied at anyone’s leisure.”

“Hey! That seems unreasonable!”

Allura purses her lips. “It’s perfectly reasonable,” she says, adding detail to the rule on the Housemates Contract.

“I’m out.” Lance throws his hands in the air. “I’ll find somewhere else to live.”

Hunk snorts. “Two days before the semester starts? Yeah right.”

“Okay, rule. Keep it down until at least ten AM,” Pidge suggests.

“No,” says Lance.

Hunk shrugs.

Allura looks pained. “…Would you accept eight AM?”

Pidge wrinkles her nose. Lance huffs.

“Good compromise, Allura,” Hunk says brightly, and hands her the green marker.

“I still hate you for the ‘quiet until eight AM rule,’” Lance whispers, grabbing a spoon, a yogurt cup, and his duffel bag. He kicks socked feet into his sliders, trying not to slap them against the kitchen tile as he follows Allura to the front door.

She looks back at him so he can see her roll her eyes. “You’re being childish, Lance.”

Lance scowls at her back as she opens the door. “Yeah? Well you’re being _mean_ , ’Lura.”

She rolls her eyes again as they get into the car, and then one more time for luck when he spins the radio volume all the way up before they’re even out of the driveway.

“Quiet hours, Lance,” she warns him, a smile plucking the edges of her mouth.

He cups a hand by his ear. “What?” He points to the radio in a dramatic, repetitive stabbing gesture. “I can’t hear you over the music!”

It’s a four minute drive to the gym, which is long enough to fight Allura for all the high notes in “Chandelier.” He’s two minutes late to drylands because he didn’t finish his yogurt in the car, and Shiro gives him the _most_ gut-wrenching look. It’s the “I’m not mad, I’m just disappointed,” look that Lance really thought was supposed to be reserved for people much older than Shiro.

Lance resents it, honestly. Shiro’s built like a motherfucking god, and the world gave him early access to the guilt-trip look, too? Pure injustice.

Drylands are a bitch, because. Well. They always are.

Lance complains the whole drive home, and Allura turns up the volume over him, smirking.

“Nadia!” Lance crows, beaming at his laptop camera.

He gets a handful of looks. Should he be quieter in the middle of the common area where he’s sitting amongst other students eating lunch, drinking Starbucks, and studying? Yeah, probably. Is he _gonna_ be? No way.

“How’s everyone doing? How’s your brother?”

She tells him everyone is good, and shows him Sylvio’s latest attempt at knitting (Lance will need to give him another lesson next time he’s home, clearly), and asks him if he’s getting smart yet. Lance laughs way too loud for the common area and ignores the looks he gets.

“Say hi to everyone for me,” he says, feeling his chest pang.

She nods and she goes with a goofy salute, and now Lance’s heart aches right along with his shoulders and thighs.

They don’t all meet Keith at the same time. Lance meets him at a party, and then waves him over at the gym to meet Allura.

The two of them are fast, ferocious, fear-inspiring friends, and Lance feels as though he’s unleashed a new force of nature into the world, bringing them together.

Pidge knows Keith from the tutoring center, about which she gives him a hard time until he demolishes her exam scores in Quantum Physics even worse than she whooped his ass in Differential Equations, and she shuts up about it.

Hunk doesn’t meet Keith until he’s invited over to the house to study one day, but Hunk offers him a cookie and Keith washes the tray without being asked, and Hunk puts a solemn hand on Keith’s shoulder and declares him his new favorite.

He becomes as standard a part of their kitchen table study sessions as Allura’s bright colored notecards and Pidge’s messy scribble on her mini whiteboard. Keith says he studies better at their kitchen table, with their clean-house rules and their respectful-noise-level regulations, than he does in the dorms.

Everyone’s better about staying focused or taking study breaks, whenever each respective activity is appropriate, when they have both Allura _and_ Keith to keep them on task. (Keith said, one late night when Lance complained at the insistence they keep going, that ‘patience yields focus.’ Lance climbed up onto his rickety wooden chair and pointed down at Keith accusingly. “That’s a Shiro line!” he shouted. “Why are you parroting Shiro lines!?” And this is how they came to know that Shiro and Keith had known each other so long Keith was basically Shiro’s little brother. Lance walked around with his jaw hanging open for _days._ )

They don’t clean out the extra crap from the spare bedroom until winter break that year, and even then they would’ve left it to fester if they hadn’t been properly motivated.

Keith basically lives at the house already, anyway. Hunk’s having a blast teaching him how to cook; he empties the trash without being asked; he tolerates Pidge’s conspiracy documentaries; and he’s the only one who can keep up Allura’s nightly squat routine (Lance is _this close_ , okay?). The extra rent money doesn’t hurt, either.

He moves in on a cold Saturday morning, and Allura won’t even let Lance count it as his morning workout.

“That was _so many boxes!_ ” he insists.

“We’re in the _middle of the season!_ ” Allura counters.

Lance bangs his head gently against the passenger’s side window the whole way to the gym, simmering in resentment. In the backseat, Keith and Hunk sing out of key with the radio.

It feels like Lance either sleeps or swims through the entire beginning of second semester. It was like that his freshman year, and sophomore year proves no different.

He drags his heavy body to lectures, takes notes that are almost coherent, and if Shiro’s voice isn’t echoing around the pool, telling them to go another two 100’s before they take a break, Allura’s voice is telling him to ‘get out of bed, already!’ so they can cram in more ab-time before drylands.

It is hell.

Then they clean _up_ at DII championships, and it’s all worth it.

Hunk drives them home, glittering paint still on his cheeks and lion ears still perched on his head, and Allura falls asleep on top of Lance in the backseat. Lance can’t stop grinning. His gold medal for the 400 Free sits pretty against his navy-blue jacket. _Worth it_. He extricates Allura’s two golds from her sleepy grasp: she’s just exhausted enough for him to get away with it. He snaps a selfie of himself with three gold medals and a beautiful girl sleeping in his lap and sends it to everyone he knows.

He facetimes Veronica before he passes out, stupid smile plastered on his face like it’s permanent. She smiles pretty damn hard, too.

There’s a party a couple days later, and there is so much food, and so much alcohol, and everyone is telling everyone else congrats, just over and over again, and it’s motherfucking glorious.

Halfway through second semester of sophomore year, swim and dive season is over, and Diff EQ threatens Lance’s GPA like a gun to his head.

Professor Iverson basically tells him he should drop the class. He throws in a strong implication that Lance should think about changing his major, too, just to really salt the wound.

“I’m going to murder him,” says Allura through her teeth, knuckles bleaching on the steering wheel.

Pidge in the backseat pushes her glasses up her nose and says, “I wonder if Matt still has those old access codes for the university site. You think Iverson would get fired if we put something inappropriate on his profile?”

Next to her in the backseat, Hunk reaches up to pat Lance’s shoulder. “I can help you study for it later, okay, buddy? Do you want garlic knots with dinner?”

Lance watches the neighborhood smear by out his window. “Yes, please,” he says, trying to smile.

He heads right into the shower when they get home, leaving Allura to answer Keith’s quirked eyebrow about the uncharacteristic gloom hanging around Lance.

When Lance gets out of the bathroom, Keith’s packing up for his night class and the rich, sharp smell of garlic knots in the oven is gradually filling the air, draping around Lance’s shoulders, heavy and comforting.

There is a thick, red, plastic binder on the kitchen table at Lance’s spot. A piece of notebook paper sitting crooked inside the front plastic sleeve reads: ‘Keith,’ and under that: ‘Diff EQ.’

“Look, Keith sucked at that class too,” Pidge says, looking up over her Nintendo Switch where she’s leaned against the kitchen counter, keeping Hunk silent company while he bakes. “I got him through it. We’ve got this. We’re a team, remember?”

Lance sits down. He does remember.

He remembers dragging Pidge out of her blanket pile by both hands when her glasses were blurry with tears over a last-minute essay, making her dance around the room with him until she was laughing instead of crying. He remembers sitting at the table with Allura and setting a repeating timer to remind her to take a break and scream into her pillow when Mechanical Physics kept making her so frustrated she couldn’t focus. He remembers drawing up a meal plan with Pidge and Keith when Hunk had a big report due, and then making a grocery list with Allura because Hunk appreciated their cooking but still needed his ingredients to stress-bake.

He thinks of Allura’s notes, always coded in five different colors that indicate which sections she thinks each of them will need to focus on the most. He thinks of Hunk’s comfort cookies. He thinks of Keith’s steady, encouraging focus, and Pidge’s brutal but brilliant math tutoring.

“Okay,” Lance says, swallowing. “But what if Iverson’s right?”

Keith, on his way out the door, stops to give Lance a dull stare. “I will call Shiro right now and tell him you’re in need of a pep talk. Just say the word.”

Lance laughs, a little watery. “I think the garlic knots are gonna do the trick for now. Thanks, bud.”

Keith waves, and leaves, and Pidge comes over and rests her elbows on Lance’s shoulders and her Switch on his head, and he’s smiling when he shoves her away.

If Lance thought Allura during swim season was ruthless, Pidge tutoring math is absolutely apocalyptic.

“Try it again,” Pidge says. “From the beginning of the problem.”

“ _Hhhhhnnnnrggghhh_ ,” says Lance. “Pi- _idge_. Nooo.”

Hunk slides over the rest of his own coffee, the utter goddamn angel. “Come on, bud. You got this.”

Allura flicks him in the ear as she walks past, balancing two thick textbooks in one arm, her purse on the other, with a calculator, pencil, and eraser all tangled between the fingers of one hand. “I believe in you, Lance,” she says. Then, much louder: “Has anyone seen my fucking _shoes?_ ”

“You’re missing the negative sign there,” Keith says, dropping the end of his own pencil down on Lance’s paper.

“Fuck you,” says Lance, but tiredly and without any heat.

Keith pats his hand. “You too, buddy.”

He passes the class.

He doesn’t change his _fucking_ major, but thanks, Iverson.

He sees Shiro over the summer, which is the wildest shit ever. You’re not supposed to see your assistant coach outside of the school year. It’s like, forbidden.

But there he is, in a black tank top and sweat pants, prosthetic off, opening the door for the whole lot of them to clamber into his and his fiancé’s apartment for the ‘meet Keith’s family’ dinner that Keith is still wildly embarrassed about.

Once Lance gets over his horrified, awestruck disbelief at being in Shiro’s apartment, he has a great time. Adam’s cooking is delicious, and it’s even more delicious to make fun of Keith and watch his face go the color of a stop sign as his older brother joins in.

Lance and Allura have dialed back their work-outs just a little for the summer. When Shiro asks, they say they haven’t, and he looks pleased. Lance winks at Allura, and she snickers behind her hand.

“I’m going to _crush_ this semester,” Lance says. The stack of books in his arms is tall enough to rest his chin on. The corners of the book on the bottom dig into his arms.

“ _Hell_ yeah,” says Hunk, similarly laden.

Allura, who is an unearthly strong goddess of a woman, balances her whole stack of textbooks on one arm and pops the minivan’s trunk with her free hand. They pile in all their shit. All their expensive, expensive shit.

Lance raises an expectant hand, and Allura slaps him a high-five on her way to the driver’s seat.

“Ready to kill another year, ’Lura?” he asks, slamming the trunk closed.

Allura’s grin is sharp, just as scary as her 100 Fly times. “Don’t ask stupid questions, Lance,” she says, and she puts the car in drive.

They blast music all the way home.


End file.
